Description
Balcony Press, Published 1994. Paperback, 384 pp.; 23 cm; second printing (number line to 2); illustrated with black-and-white photographs, chiefly by Carol Monteverde, and historical views; map.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition with a Very Good dust jacket. Speckled brown card covers printed with reproductions of Los Angeles building permit applications. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Pictorial wraparound dust jacket with flaps, sepia-toned photographs of Tudor, Spanish Colonial and modern Los Angeles houses under a blue sky, price $34.95 on front flap; bright, with light edge wear. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. A social history of Los Angeles told through its houses, from Native American dwellings and the adobes of the Spanish pueblo to the postwar tracts and condominiums of the 1970s and 1980s. Ovnick, a Los Angeles native who taught the city's history at Los Angeles Valley College and California State University, Northridge, traces how each wave of newcomers built the city it had been sold: the Victorians of the 1880s boom, the Spanish Colonial and "Hansel and Gretel" fantasies of the 1920s, the modernism of Schindler and Neutra, and the postwar Ranch house. About 180 photographs, including the Banning Mansion, the Gamble house, Villa de Leon and the Lovell Beach House. Robert Winter, author of Architecture in Los Angeles: A Compleat Guide, compares it with Carey McWilliams's Southern California: An Island on the Land. Contents: Preface; Part I, Foundations: Mystical Essence/Tangible Architecture; Simply Paradise: The Indians, to 1769; Part II, El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora, La Reina de Los Angeles: Spanish Pueblo, 1781-1821; From Mexican Pueblo to Bilingual Cowtown; Part III, Sold! To the Man in the Front Row, Selling a City: 1870s Promotionalism: The Railroad, Agriculture, and Health; The 1880s Boom: Victoriana Exoticized; Part IV, Defining an Identity, 1890s to 1920: The 1890s: A Search for Meaning; Facing West; Part V, Movie Stars and Hard Times, 1920-1939: Revivalism: Insecurity and Pretense; Los Angeles Finds Its Own Style; Daring Originals; Ordinary Dreams; Part VI, Dreaming On: Rosie and Joe and a House in L.A., 1939-1960; Is This the End of the Rainbow?; Epilogue; List of Illustrations; Notes; Index